


Penitent Impatience

by Mithrakana



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Betrayal, FenFen!, M/M, Male Slash, Not Canon Compliant, Punishment, Racism, Sexual Content, Slavery, Slow Burn, Trust Me It'll Be Awesome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-26 16:41:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3857722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithrakana/pseuds/Mithrakana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the year 9:30 Dragon, Fen’Harel came conscious screaming in a cave beside the sea. That same night, a slave's heart came awake and learned to lose.</p><p>The Dread Wolf failed in Arlathan. The Caged Wolf failed to flee.</p><p>---<br/>8-22-15. Project queued indefinitely; Prequel fic <i>The Griffonkeeper's War</i>, an AU Solas origin story set in Arlathan, will start posting when the Fen'Namas trilogy is completed! Stay tuned! Fenris/Fen'Harel is going to be a wild ride!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Penitent Impatience

Legend penned Uthenera a most serene and pious thing. It  _could_ be, for those entrants who went willing. Voluntary dreamers watched their minds unfold and grow in endless sheets of color, basking in the knowledge of the bless’d realms Beyond.

Pursuants were revered from start to blissful finish. The Proem of Repose? The Elvhen held no revelry in greater awe. The Tending? An Elvhen soul could know no greater honor, save Uthenera itself. And The Waking. _Oh,_ The Waking. Imagine lazing half-asleep and cozy through a sunny afternoon that lasts for years. Imagine, then, you wake to feel the love and adoration only those who live forever can affect. A _world_ of eyes admiring you and hanging on your every word as though your tongue spawned only gospel.

 _Willing_ entrants authored tomes, if e’er they woke. Immortal, as they were, they filled vast atheneums with their insights both momentous and mundane. They walked among their kin as true celebrities, and all of Elvhenan was theirs to own.

For those sentenced by Elgar’nan’s wrathful hand, long sleep was tort’rous hell eternal. _He_ could send you to the corners of the Fade where even Envy feared to tread, and _he_ could **keep you there.** No Proem for you. A Tending? Nae, a _torturer,_ a Linefaced servant tasked to keep your body living only barely. The Waking, if you’ve lived to know it? Imagine jolting from a nightmare to the pain of teeming dull-toothed vermin feasting on your nearly-corpse.

In the year 9:30 Dragon, Fen’Harel came conscious screaming in a cave beside the sea.

* * *

They were raucous. They were willful. They were…free.

Here, northwest of Alam, the jungle kissed the Colean Sea. Occasionally, the Fog Warriors would light a bonfire on the shore and wash the talcum from their bodies in the ebbing tide. This was such a night, and he was with them.

Unlike Tevinter's blazing kitchens burning hot and dirty, _this_ fire smelled fresh and wholesome ‘neath Seheron’s starry sky. Fenris, in no rush to shed his ghostly mantle, stargazed with a chilly ocean full of friendship lapping at his feet. Wet sand yielded to his lounging, even as it clung to him. If he clenched his fist, relaxed it, and repeated, his foggy overlay would wear. He held his tattooed hand above his face and did just that, watching whitewash crack and crumble o’er his knuckles in the moonlight.

His clay-clumped hair was unaffected by the briney breeze, but his _spirit_ was enlivened with a breath of it. This paint meant brotherhood. This paint meant stealth and sweet rebellion. This paint was a gift his heart would _always_ cherish. For the first time in his life that he remembered, the abandoned slave was smiling. When storm clouds came to veil the moon, the warriors in the sea began to hoot and party. When a naked member stormed the coast to hoist him into the rain-battered fray, Fenris laughed and left his life's wet-sand impression in his wake.

As these warriors would strike in fog, so sailed Danarius in dead of cloudy night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Opening Themesong!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH7WJ7zRYrw)
> 
> There's shadows on the walls of moments far too troubling to recall.  
> All the settings and the scenes that signal suffering, impassioned pleas that ended in a whisper.
> 
> And all the lessons learned, were they worth the ash from all the bridges burned?  
> Standing stomping in the damage and the ruins of a slip of tongue with **tragic** consequences.
> 
> I think that we've all made our gravest mistakes on the greatest intentions that we're **too stubborn to let go.**  
>  With this little time before I go, I'll open up my mouth and scream it out to cast my voice into the crowd.
> 
> Now that you're alone, is it really so impossible to know?  
> All the actions and reactions pinned against each other never really end just how you wanted...
> 
> I know that all of this will come and go.  
> So, open up your mouth and scream it out to cast your voice into the crowd: _Don't let the world, don't let the world beat you down!_


End file.
